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Turn off the TV, turn on the conversation
August 3, 2009
Talk with your kids, but please turn the TV off first. Researchers at the University of Washington Medical School equipped 300 children, ages 2 to 48 months, with tape recorders that soaked up everything the children heard and said during the day. The recorders were worn one day per month for up to two years.
Each hour a TV was on, children heard 770 fewer words from an adult (a 7% decrease), and they spoke less themselves, according to a story in the New York Times (6/16/09). The researchers link the decrease in communication to the fact that adults often use the TV to entertain children, and even when adults are in the room, they get distracted by the TV and interact less with the children present.
While the study focused on toddlers, I suspect the findings would carry over for older children, or worsen, since older children get more engrossed in story lines and TV-related activities like Playstation and Wii.
TV can be a good teaching tool when parents and children watch together and discuss the messages in ads and programs — my girls got so used to me pointing out sexist stereotypes and careless social behavior that they started beating me to the punch by the time they were in fifth grade.
If you want to discuss another topic, though, turn off the TV and turn your complete attention to your child. You’ll build a young child’s verbal skills, and you’ll build trust when you both focus on having quality conversations. That will establish a pattern of communication that will make increasingly sensitive conversations about sexuality easier.
Time for Sex? Yawn.
August 3, 2009
Don’t assume your partner is bored if he or she yawns while you’re getting sexually intimate. Most likely, the yawn indicates a shift from one mental state to another.
According to University of Maryland researcher Dr. Robert Provine, yawning may be triggered by the release of Dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is a hormone associated with the pleasure and reward, i.e., your brain’s ability to figure out, on a physiological level, “If I do this, I am rewarded with pleasure, and I want to do it again…” It also triggers the release of oxytocin, which is the hormone associated with emotional bonding.
So don’t get offended if your partner yawns when you show off your best moves. You could be setting off a sexually exciting chain of events!